Web Designer’s Arsenal: a Collection of Free Useful Websites

A designers are always lacking materials to create a design. Even if time is running out, it’s better to exceed the deadline than do the bad job. The musician has musical instruments to give the world to hear the sounds that play in his head; an artist has a brush, paint and easel to paint a picture that he has in mind, but what about the web designer? A designer has a set of favourite websites with free useful stuff in his bookmarks.

This web designer’s arsenal helps him to win a fight with hard-to-pleased clients and implement all the amazing ideas in order to create a truly great design.

Today I’m going to share with you a collection of free useful websites from my own bookmarks. Of course, I often use a Google search to find some stuff i need. However, why can’t you go to the particular website and know that you will find needed things there for sure. Today’s collection is not just ordinary freebies. To be honest, I spent a lot of time to collect all those websites and all of them have helped me to create really good design at one time. So, take a look at them, choose and download. Feel free to make your mark in the comment section.

Photoshop Brushes

Every web project you take requires some brushes in order to complete the design and make it looks super cool. Small details like hair, eyelashes, skin imperfections could be corrected with Photoshop brushes. A lot of them are created every day. So, it’s not a big issue to find a needed one in the web for free. You can find brushes with a certain form, hand-drawn or technical ones.

I feel lack of brushes every time I’m going to create a design. So, I use a few websites to find the right brushes. Use search and keywords to find useful stuff faster.

DevaintAtr is the greatest and the largest online social network for the artist all around the world. It was found to inspire and entertain the creative people. Here you will find logos, fonts, photography, PDS-files, Photoshop brushes, shapes and tutorials, and a lot of other useful stuff. There is also a community on the Deviantart platform that allows you to promote, exhibit and share your works. The search box will help you to find the needed material. Please, learn the licences properly before the downloading a file.

All Photoshop stuff is definitely here. There are a lot of brushes, patterns, textures, shapes, actions, gradients and styles for your Photoshop needs on Brucheezy. There is also a blog and community in order to share your thoughts, ideas or just ask for a help.

Photoshop Custom Shapes

The situation is the same as with brushes. Therefore, take a look at shapes on these websites and choose what you need.

Of course, Photoshop users are able to benefit from the great number of high-quality resources that are available freely all around the web. The custom shapes are also extremely important in the right situation. Fortunately, a wide variety of shapes available. Use a certain category or a searching box to save your time and ease the scanning.

Icons

It’s not practical to create a particular collection of icons for every web-project you take. This process requires a lot of work and time. In this case, you should look for something suitable all around the web. You can use icons sets in web designs, web applications or simply on your desktop. Good designed icons also improve the quality of the designer’s work.

A huge number of designers make theirs icon sets available for free, thus giving their work more exposure. There are high-quality icons sets on the websites below. All of them can be used for private or even commercial needs. Always read the licenses, they can be changed from time to time.

There is a list of websites with great icons. All the websites you can see have a good reputation and they’re time-tested.

Social Icons

There are a lot of social networks in the net. You need a unique icon for each of them. Give your website visitors an opportunity to follow your updates and news with a help of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Behance and so on.

Of course, you can find the icons on the websites I’ve mentioned above. But there are a lot of high-quality freebie in the web, I’d like to share with you. Clean and minimal design makes them multipurpose.

It is a freebie. Here you will find a huge bundle of free Google Plus interface icons.

Vector and Photos

Vector illustrations and photos are the integral parts of any web project. It is impossible to list all the sites where you can find similar materials, but here are a few that I’m found. They presented a new way to download photos and illustrations from the web. All the materials are free. There is senselessly to describe all the websites in the list, because they are similar. They are storages of free photos and illustrations. If you are looking for some picture, visit the first website. If you failed, so go on and visit the next one. There are more then 20 websites in the list below.

Before Freepik exists, the free graphic files were not ordered in one website, and it took hours to find quality free vectors, psd or photos. Now, they can be found whatever you need with a single search. Freepik makes life of many designers much easier.

Logos

The right logo should reflect the main goal of you business. It need to be simple as well as memorable. The most famous logos can be easily drawn on paper from memory. It is important quality of good logo. A logo shows off your relation to the particular niche.

I usually use logos in my website templates creation. In order to do not waste my time on the logo creation, but focus on template design. Below you see the websites with the free logos. You can use them for inspiration or personal (and even commercial) needs.

Shaboopie is a website that provides the customers with free logos in PSD or vector formats. You can use the logos in personal and commercial web projects. The owners just ask you do not profit from the logos directly.

Fonts

The choice out there is quite huge, so you need some time to find free and high-quality fonts in the web, but you can invest this time on your web project. So, it is the highlight of such kind of articles: the designer bookmarks the article in order to find there some useful stuff when he needs. So, I have collected a few websites where you’ll find almost any font for free.

I think it is one of the most important things in designer’s work. No matter what kind of work you do, a designer needs fonts almost in every kind of design. In my opinion, there are three the most popular websites below.

This is a good website for designers and developers where a lot of web fonts from Google are placed. Make the web more attractive, readable and beautiful place with amazing fonts. All of the fonts here are Open Sourse. It means that you are free to share your favourites with friends. You can even edit or customize a font in order to suit your needs. Use the fonts in any way you want, no matter private or commercial.

Dafont is an awesome archive of the free fonts. Here you will find the needed one for sure.

UI Design Patterns

User interface design pattern is one of the hardest and time-consuming designer’s job. So, let’s say, “thanks” to those who has created free UI. The UI design patterns were described at the first time in 1960s by Cristopher Alexander. Since then he made a lot of researches on this topic. Design patterns have found a place in many areas of our life and IT sphere is not the exception. UI design patterns is a solution for a number of common user interface problems. These brief website overview will help you to choose the right design patter for a particular website design.

iPad & iPhone & Android GUI

These GUI are important things for the designers that create different applications’ design. On these websites you will find the PSD full mock up with all layers in vectors that will allow you to change design without loss of quality. By the way, in my opinion all the interfaces for iPhone, iPad and Android were taken from website teehanlax.com. There you’ll find free and high quality stuff.

PSD Files

Free psd-files that will help you to complete an amazing design. Here you will find great psd-files such as icons, buttons, UI, GUI, logos, and so on. A massive collection of free high-quality PSD templates are waiting for you. On these websites you can also find the elements taht were described before, such as icons, UI, business cards, and so on. Therefore, this part of the article is quite important.

365PSD is a world of high-quality PSDs that can be used for personal and commercial use without worrying about the licencing. You can download any PSD file and use it as you want. Use a searching box or popular tags on the right side in order to find the right PSD template.

Business Cards

I think there are a lot of free and paid business cards in the web. Once I’ve downloaded a business card in order to see how it is organized, (I mean to know the size, marking, etc) and then create my own one. You also can do the same.

A business card is like your face for the customers. It also reflect your brand and style. Try your best to design an amazing business card. Customers will appreciate it by far. A few free business cards for inspiration below.

It’s very difficult issue to find free business cards. Basically, all free business cards you can find in different freebie or in the business cards collections on the blogs around the net. You’ll find the explicit references on website that create the business cards them-self. I hope you’ll like them.

Again, the long time favorite DeviantArt, but in Business Cards section. But I want to warn you that some of the cards out there still are not free. But still the number of free business cards is huge, so keep on looking and you’ll find what you need.

Facebook Covers

Depending on the increasing number of Facebook users, covers are critically important. Many people put a photo on a place of Facebook cover, but it is not the original solution at all. Especially, if you need to present your brand in the web. A cover can help you to promote your services and goods. It is hard to find a truly suitable Facebook cover online. The examples below allows you to choose.

This direction is a relatively new, but still there are not so many websites that develop free Facebook covers. Many websites lay out interesting and unusual photos with the right size which can be easily installed on Facebook.

It’s a website with great Facebook covers, but as I’ve mentioned before, a lot of them are just usual photos. There a huge number of covers, so you’ll have a choice.

Conclusion

I hope that the collection of websites from my bookmarks will help you in creation of truly great design. If you want to ask any question, share thoughts or just say “hello” use a comment section below.

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Meet the Author:

Pavlushka

Pavlushka is the author of CrazyPixels web design blog. He writes inspirational articles about web design technologies and useful web design tutorials, where you can find a lot of top tips how to create amazing web design artworks. Feel free to follow him on Twitter.